what to know before you go

Digital Asset Management (DAM): What to Know Before You Go!By John Horodyski, Principal of DAM Education, a consulting agency

Copyright ©2015 Widen, Inc.All rights reserved.

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Digital Asset Management: What to Know Before You Go!


Copyright © 2015 Widen Enterprises, Inc. All rights reserved.

The decision to implement a digital asset management (DAM) system is a positive step in the right direction to gaining operational and intellectual control of your digital assets and is not one to be taken lightly. It brings with it great responsibility as to how your organization’s assets will be efficiently and effectively managed in daily operations. It is more than a sum total of its parts; it must include a detailed review and analysis of all those contributing factors to DAM - digital assets, organization, workflow, security, etc. And yet, the decision itself to choose a DAM system enacts a chain of questions to be carefully considered before proceeding down the path to DAM.

This whitepaper dissects the question of “What to know before you go?” and details the best questions to ask yourself, your team, your department, and your organization before you go with a digital asset management system!

DAM: Are You Ready?

What is the goal of the DAM system? • Is this for marketing operations? Web content? Long-term digital preservation? • Is it a singular installation or more expansive for a global audience? • If you can get your goal right, then you can achieve DAM success

There may be many good reasons to implement a DAM system within your organization, not the least of which is identifying, centralizing, and making accessible valuable assets for use and reuse within an organization. And while that is a worthy and most formidable goal to assume, there must be an opportunity to stand back and ensure the problems are being solved with the DAM solution. Knowing your problem to solve will be your greatest starting point on your DAM journey, and from there more questions may then be formed. First and foremost, the problem of who is your audience and what are their problems to be solved is paramount to success. Take the time to understand the use scenarios. Who will be using the DAM and what procedures / output do they need?

There is no need to work in isolation, and it is encouraged to seek out input from others within your organization. This is a great way to make friends, form alliances, and create strong internal partners that will ultimately help drive your DAM solution.

DAM is not a project, a temporary assignment to IT or marketing whereby temporary resources and monies are assigned to try and fix something. DAM is more than this. It is a product to be financed, resourced, and managed as any other product and/or service found in any organization.


3Copyright © 2015 Widen Enterprises, Inc. All rights reserved.

What are your digital assets? • Content analysis, rights, standards • Images, graphics, videos, 3D models, text, etc. • Similar, but different and all deserving specific attention

Do you really know what you have? This is not necessarily a leave-no-rock-unturned siege upon the organization, but if you are to invest time in this, then it is advised to look far and wide for assets, for they may well reside in both the familiar and unfamiliar of places. Shared folders, desktops, and external drives are usual suspects in this exercise. This is a perfect opportunity to reach out to your users and/or customers and ask them what assets they have and, better yet, where those assets are. And ask your users where the assets are going and how are they to be used.

Knowing what those assets are and how many you have (and will be creating on a regular basis) will help determine what type of DAM implementation you will need. This may be as small as a single installation with a few users or an enterprise-level solution with many things to do.

In addition, knowing more about your assets will ultimately help you in your preliminary discussions with software vendor(s). In most situations, DAM solutions will be able to do what you need them to do, but there are situations where you may have unique assets, such as 3D models and their associated information, or workflows that may not be as easy for a DAM solution to solve. This may well need customization work, which is both timely and costly. That thought should be at the back of your mind at all times, and working with a good DAM vendor will make the process all the more profitable for you. Engage and build a strong relationship with your DAM vendor during the “courting” stage, for it will be one of your greatest assets going forward.

What is your metadata model(s)? • How do you identify and define your assets? • Are you able to achieve the “sweet sixteen”? • How important is search to you?

Do you know what assets you have and how to identify, organize, and describe them? This is not an exercise to be rushed; this is critical to the entire DAM operation. If you get this part wrong, then the entire DAM is damned!

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Specifically, metadata will be your greatest “asset.” It will provide the structure and information needed to make your assets more meaningful and not just assets. When metadata is present, your assets become “smart” assets; they provide meaning and value.

Time and time again, people feel the need, and rightfully so, to describe their assets in multiple ways from the perspective of multiple users. More often than not, that exercise can lead to 50–75 metadata fields where assets may be described. In some circumstances, this number might rise north of 100, well beyond reach of control and in a state of information overload. Your goal is to have a manageable set of fields upon which you are able to discern the most critical elements of your assets in terms of administrative, descriptive, and technical metadata.

What is your taxonomy?

• The better question is, “Do you know what this is?” • How are your assets organized? • Why do I need one, and can the DAM help me with that?

Indeed, if this word strikes imagery of various alpine and bucolic animals stuffed in their most glorious of poses, then this is a good time to use the dictionary and figure this out. Better yet, hire a librarian or archivist to help you out.

Now that you have identified your assets and believe you have a metadata model of manageable means, it is time to consider how they will be organized within the DAM system both from a back-end perspective as well as the front end. Out of the box, DAM systems have existing functionality for the visual display of information for the user; that’s the “how” part of DAM.

How to search for these assets? This could be through a variety and a combination of means:

• A faceted classification system • Well-defined folder browsing • Perhaps a structured vocabulary from the corporate system feeding the DAM

There is no “magic number” of metadata fields because every organization is different, though the number you may wish to aspire is the sweet sixteen. These are the sixteen elements that you need to identify, organize, and describe your assets and, ultimately, let your users search against.



Think of your users and how they will want to play with the DAM and search for assets. There may well not be a simple, one-size-fits-all solution that may involve different views depending upon your users.

What if this is to “replace” an existing DAM? What if this is a new venture altogether?... A new DAM?

• Migration requirements • Change management

Either way, these what-if scenarios are worthy of attention in order to understand how to implement a successful DAM solution. As previously mentioned, this is not just a simple project to be executed, but rather a product, a significant investment in time, money, and resources to solve a specific problem within your organization. If this is a replacement DAM solution, then most obvious of concerns are that of legacy development code and migration of assets and technology systems, connections with existing systems part of a larger CMS or MAM - the entire technology infrastructure.

If this is a new DAM solution, there are other pressing issues to consider, most notably resources. Do you have the right team in place to implement this? Better yet, do you have a change management process in place to manage the change to a DAM system? This includes everything from communications to product evangelism, to metadata management and beyond. Take the time to consider how this will be rolled out and who will be a part of that process.

Consideration of possible workflow issues • Workflow modeling and production tool requirements • Is there a solid workflow process in place? • Optimization of marketing operations

Digital asset management may be understood as a workflow device to assist in the marketing operations or other operational management critical to your organization’s needs. Some have invested in DAM solutions to speed up workflow and potentially create bigger profits, and again, the opportunity exists to take a step back and receive as much of an overview as possible. Now is the time to identify and map out the workflow process of your department and/or organization. If there were to be any holes in the process, this would be the time to find them both in current terms as well as future needs for the organization.

In many situations, companies say to a vendor, “Here is our process. Automate it.” and do not look at the integrity of the process. If the process is flawed and cumbersome, you do not want that to be automated because the end result will be messy. In addition, documenting the

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workflow is another great opportunity to build better relationships with internal teams and partners. The result of this documentation serves as the blueprint for your DAM solution and the people and processes connected along the way.

Consideration for digital preservation of assets • Are some of your assets worth preserving beyond the workflow cycles you have established? • More to consider than just metadata: What about formats and standards?

This is critical in terms of looking ahead with the view from behind. There may well be sound reasons to identify, organize, and centralize your brand assets in one location for digital preservation of some kind, whether that is short- to mid-term or a much longer-term vision. If indeed a “preservation” problem needs to be solved, talk to your DAM vendor about this and discern what may be done. In some instances, there are many good examples of using archiving as a means of procuring new monetization and revenue streams. It is worth the effort to explore new ways of repurposing assets, as well as considering the long-tail use of assets for potential repurposing in the future.

Consideration of any licensing / legal issues

• Do you need a DRM and why? • Permissions, roles, and security: How well do you know your assets, your users, and their needs? • In the cloud or out of the cloud, and what does that really mean?

This might be the time where metadata comes to the rescue for you and your assets. A comprehensive metadata model with fields specific to rights usage and management will be critical for your users’ interest in use and reuse. To get there demands an understanding of what your assets are and knowledge of how they may be used. No technology will solve that issue; that is pure human processing.

On the other side of the rights issue is the construction of permissions, user roles, and security for the DAM soltuion that will guide and direct your users to a more successful DAM experience.

Consideration of possible DAM systems / vendors to use

• Evaluation, RFP, proof of concept, test drives, and sand boxes • Selection and procurement



This is where the fun begins: the review and selection of DAM vendors to solve your DAM problems. Do not rush this process. Take the time to interview your DAM vendors for the job, and ask them questions about existing clients, technical roadmaps, and professional services. Good DAM vendors will be found with ease; they will stand out and provide service from the beginning. A good scan of a vendor’s website will show you what they are doing and who they are working with. Be mindful of whitepapers and case studies, as those will provide insight into their design and ability to solve problems. Furthermore, a strong social media presence will let you know how current they are and plugged into the marketing operations issues affecting DAM. This is your time to effectively perform due diligence.

Management issues • Operations planning and program roadmap • Do you have a leader / a champion / an evangelist? • Do you have a team in place to manage day-to-day operations?

DAM is neither a silver bullet, nor is it a Catherine wheel. It is the best way in which to manage your rich media assets for use and reuse within your organization, a beacon of hope and power to advance your organization to the next level. In order to harness that potential power, the right people need to be empowered to make changes and align DAM with the strategic goals of the organization. A champion is needed to argue on your behalf and advocate for budget spending. Champions - digital asset managers, business analysts, and technical engineers - are also needed to manage the day-to-day operations of a DAM solution.

Is it for you? DAM may well be the art of organization only so far as it may provide a structure of order amongst the information chaos of a modern media organization. DAM can do many things so long as you are willing to drive DAM well and let it solve the problems you have identified. Businesses can increase profits with DAM in two ways:

1. Organizing your assets in a central location will make them searchable and will allow your organization to save time, which equals money. Access to information will allow for quick and easy search and no more lost time looking for assets. Shorter search times lead to quicker response times.

Look past the software and determine what is going on with training, implementation support, help desk, upgrades, and new releases. It’s not just what comes out of the box that is important; the vendor you choose will become your partner in this development initiative – and you will need a good partner.

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2. The assets in your DAM solution are available for use and reuse to create new assets and new products. In the current real-time world, a quick and accurate response is priceless.

Do you have the right team in place to do this? DAM is not a project. It is a corporate product, by every sense of the definition of product. It is a long-term investment that needs people and processes to power its potential. This is about you and the choices you will make. Take the time to arm yourself with the right information and you will have a much easier time in making the right decisions.

About the Author

John Horodyski is Principal, DAM Education (http://www.dameducation.com), a DAM consulting agency focusing on DAM education & training. John is also the Manager, Digital Programming, Product Development at the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation). John also serves as Director of Marketing & Business Development for Wrinkled Pants, an educational software studio focused on the development of education and literacy based apps for the iPad.

John teaches a graduate course at San José State University, School of Library & Information Science in Digital Asset Management. John spent many years at Electronic Arts where he managed their global digital asset management system as well as being a producer within the EA Sports and online divisions. He has published professional articles and presented at numerous conferences on digital media, metadata in video games and taxonomy design and continues to offer DAM training & consulting.

John holds a Masters Archival Studies and Masters Library and Information Science from the University of British Columbia and is the Managing Editor to the Journal of Digital Asset Management.

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